"The Earth Still Wants You" - LYRICS
Below, Hoag explains the backstory behind many of the tracks from the new record.


(Editor's note: To buy the album, visit the store page)

“Rocketships” is all about separation. The separation can be physical—in terms of actual distance and space between two people—or it can be emotional in terms of worldview and how two people’s philosophies of living change over time. Where is my friend? Where is my lover? Why did he/she make that choice? Why did he take that path? Why did I take mine? I chose the imagery of “outer space” because it’s infinitely vast. There’s a lot of distance covered out there, and sometimes the distance between two people can feel just as astronomical and mysterious as the distance between a rocketship and the earth it came from.   

This image of space-to-earth as an example of distance also helps illustrate one of the main themes of the album: the human race’s increasingly weak connection with mother earth.  Human beings have not lived with the earth for some time now. We've lived on it, but not with it. But as the cover art shows, it’s not too late. No matter how far we’ve traveled from our primal, mystical, natural connection with “the earth,” we are forever joined to it. It still “wants” us. This is what that tether/rope thing on the back of the rocketship is all about. And as relates to the song “Rocketships,” this tether is a symbol of the enduring connection between our old friends/lovers/family members who we think we’ve grown apart from forever, but whom in fact are always at the other end of that rope. 

One particular lyric in “Rocketships,”—though it was written long before my dog Nessie died—was later used on the inside cover as a tribute to that beloved creature: “Look for you in outer space, the earth still wants you, pull you back…” I guess I sort of believe that Nessie has turned into star-dust that is now floating around in outer-space. Maybe she’s a star.

Let’s go back for a second to what I meant about the space that separates people in terms of worldview and life choices, because that issue comes up in several other songs on the album. When the presidential campaign was going on, it was every liberal in the country saying, “If Obama doesn't win, I'm gonna move to Europe or Canada.” “Rocketships” is partly about those people who would give up and just run away. And I thought that was weak to just run away and give up on the system. I would hope that if Obama lost, people wouldn’t give up, they’d continue to fight for change and to commit themselves to taking back the system and turning it into something we can believe in again.

But sometimes it’s hard. It’s easy to get excited during a campaign, to believe that this is our one big time to exercise our “civic duty,” but getting “our guy” elected is really just one small part of our duty. The big part comes when we get the dude elected and we have to stay involved and keep working. That’s what “Sit at the Table” is all about. “I believe in the theory, believe in it dearly, but I ain’t got the time. I believe in the new day, believe in the new way, but it’s all in my mind.” Sometimes it’s hard to stay energized after a campaign. (“I believe in the campaign, believe in the refrain, but it’s all in my mind.”) And sometimes, you feel like a hypocrite for believing in these grand, wonderful concepts like “peace” and “diplomacy” and “bi-partisanship.” Sometimes you find that you can’t even practice these things in your own small life. Hence “I believe in a sing-song, believe that a war’s wrong, but sometimes I fight. I believe in opinions, I read about millions, but I’m always right.”

Similarly, the song “Ride Your Bike” talks about how we should all drive cars less and start riding our bikes when possible, but once again, this is often a hard ideal to live up to. Sometimes you know you should ride your bike to go grab those groceries a few miles away, but “sometimes a screw’s loose and I’d much rather drive,” as we say in “Sit At The Table.” (PS—does anyone notice the verse in “Ride Your Bike” that we borrowed from Guns ‘N’ Roses’ “Paradise City?”)

In “Hops,” we tell the story of various creatures (like the “green shrike Vireo in the canopy”) whose existence is threatened by human beings who have contributed to “land is owned, life overthrown, a pile of bones now marks my home, hear the drone.” I’ve always thought that Bonesaw’s distorted, droning guitar over this part sounded like the buzzing chainsaw that cuts down the vireo’s canopy tree. It wasn’t intentional, I’m sure, but it ended up working out. And yeah, I know we need to cut down trees because we all need houses and we all need paper, etc etc etc, and that’s part of the difficulty in upholding one’s ideals: balancing our needs with the needs of earth’s other creatures, but the fact remains that we’ve gotten to a dangerous tipping point. We’ve come to believe that no other species on earth is important. This is not what Darwin meant by survival of the fittest. Consciousness gave us conscience, and conscience enables us to look after the planet. We believe it’s not too late for us to make that decision.

“Tomatoes” is about Bonesaw’s recent interest in gardening and self-sufficient meal-making. The first verse (“Remove seed…”) is taken verbatim from the back of a seed-packet for peppers. Note the Jetsuns theme song-like bridge.

“Multitudes” is about a man trying to catch himself some fish. He gets frustrated because he doesn’t catch very much. The “multitudes” are celestial voices (the “heavenly multitudes”) that he hears emanating from the “stars frozen shut.” They tell him, “don’t worry fisherman, go home and sleep, at least you have something, have something to eat.”  He answers them in the next line with “you’re right, they’ll come again, tomorrow I’ll cast my line, they’ll take a bite, and I’ll resume the fight.” And eventually the fish will come…by the multitudes. I always envisioned the crazy instrumental bridge in this song as being a sonic representation of a lot of fish jumping out of the water.

Other songs on the album have less to do with broad themes and more to do with the stories of imaginary characters. “Eyes Like Snow” is about two lovers who struggle to believe in the power of each others’ love. In the midst of a very vague “darkness” that they both feel, one seems to be asking, Where are we headed? Where will this take us? Will we make it out? The other tries to convince them that all will be fine, that this darkness “hides an ocean of hope.” We are headed here, have faith, and in the end we will get there, says the other. Eventually they come upon a winter wonderland with blue elf-puppets and penguins skating around in ponds (??) where all is simply good.
           
“Laundry on the Line” is about an old mother whose flock has left the coup. She’s getting old, and when she hangs her laundry and all the shirts get blown all over the yard, she has to bend down and pick it all up. It hurts her back. She’s tired. But she looks to the sky and she hears music. Peace returns. “Laundry” was inspired by Bonesaw’s efforts to reduce our use of electricity by forsaking the dryer and line-drying our clothes, most of which scatter all over the yard. It was also borne of my own mother’s difficulty in dealing with an “empty nest.” She once told me that she spent 30 years raising the three of her children, and then one day she realized that chapter of her life was completely over (though it’s really not, as my brother’s and I still very much rely on her strength and support). It was a heartbreaking thing to hear, and it showed up in this song.

“Brazil” has to do with a book called “The Underground Man,” by Mick Jackson (not to be confused with “The Invisible Man,” by Ralph Ellison or “Notes from the Underground,” by that Russian dude.) The Underground Man is about a very rich, very lonely, semi-senile Duke of something-or-other in England. He is plagued by countless physical ailments that may or may not exist (his “imagination is a pain sometimes”) and countless metaphysical ailments that certainly do. He believes that his “aura” is broken, and he’s at a loss on how to go about mending one’s aura. It’s an interesting thought: It’s easy to fix a broken bone, but it’s hard to fix a broken spirit.
           
Then we got “Tennessee Traveler,” a simple song about a hitch-hiking homeless person. I received a postcard from a friend one time that said “Tennessee Traveler” on it and featured a cartoon-ish drawing of a hobo and his dog hitch-hiking. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that so many homeless people have dogs. (“I see you’ve got a dog, but do you have a home?”) But as TV’s the Dog Whisperer points out, homeless people are some of the most well-practiced “pack leaders,” as evidenced by the fact that their dogs are never on leashes yet always stay faithfully and trustingly beside them in the simple but brutal struggle for survival.

So that’s not all of the tunes, but it’s a bunch of them. If anyone has any questions about the others, or about these, just hit me up at hoag@fullservicemusic.com and we’ll rap more!